So, You Were Voted Off the Island…

Maybe you refused to eat the bug larvae. Maybe your teammates thought you were the weakest link. Maybe it just came down to you and the other guy, and that guy got the rose.

Life is so unfair.

Except of course, when it is fair, thanks to majority vote.

Reality television got one thing right. Okay, two things. The first is spectacularly reinventing a genre with lasting effects.* The second thing reality television got right is demonstrating how common voting is in our society.

Ohhhh, yes.

We start voting in elementary school. We vote on which recess game to play (kickball) and who gets to be on our team (Cherie, because she kicks hard and runs fast).

Voting is everywhere. We vote on matters trivial and profound. Sometimes we vote on matters both trivial and profound — such as:

Facebook, because I love opaque algorithms that gather information on me with hope of influencing my thinking.

Twitter, because making a decision should not entail considering more than 140 characters at a time.

Buzzfeed, because my vote here also tells me the last meal I’ll eat before I die, and I’m curious about that. (Hope it’s wings!)

eBallot. Duh.

The truth is: our society loves voting. We do it every day. The stakes vary. The outcomes vary. We do it constantly, voting with our dollars, our time, our attention. Why?

Voting is the foundation of democracy…power to the people…yadda yadda. WE GET THAT.

(Oh yeah, we get that. We get that about 1,776 ways.)

We get that so much we’ve spent the last 14 years with one singular mission: to facilitate MORE voting.

eBallot is the all-in-one, secure digital platform to create, collect, and tabulate voting results. We work every day to strengthen and expand a centuries old process of democracy.

No, we didn’t spend millions on the latest technology to secure your vote so we could get a final tally on “Who is the better musician? Taylor Swift or Kanye West?”

It wasn’t our intention to build a platform that produces voting receipts and real-time reporting so we could get cold, hard data on “Dogs versus Cats, who loves you more?”

We didn’t make eBallot so easy to use that it can be deployed by your grandmother to answer the eternal question “Red Sox or the Yankees?”

Call us idealists (we are). Call us tech nerds (if you’re flirting). We want one thing: for the world to have a trusted voting platform. Why? Well, it isn’t to impress you with hard data on pancakes versus waffles. (Unless, of course, you’re into that.)

Nope. We may be cutting-edge with our technology. But the truth is we’re a bit old-fashioned when it comes to our motivation.

Our motivation is simple. We believe in the power of a single vote. We believe that as more people exercise that power society makes real, lasting, and meaningful progress. (If you exclude the invention of reality television.) We believe voting is the tool of expression; an ongoing commitment to freedom.

Our high school civics teachers are about to cry big, salty tears of happiness in 3….2….1:

We believe voting unleashes the power to work together and change anything. That’s why we work every day to improve and expand the eBallot platform. In the last six months eBallot has become even more robust.